The crisis of the West is not merely economic or political: it concerns meaning, hope, and the capacity to orient life towards an end. In this scenario, monastic life does not appear as an eccentric form of religiosity, but as a witness that places once again at the centre the relationship between man and God.
A life given over: virginity as an eschatological sign
At the heart of monastic life lies a choice that today is often incomprehensible or openly contested: virginity for the Kingdom. Not as a sterile renunciation, but as a radical form of undivided love, wholly oriented towards God. In a cultural context that struggles to conceive of existence beyond the immediate and the satisfaction of desire, this choice retains a decisive symbolic force: it recalls that man is not made only for the present, but for a fullness that transcends him. Without this eschatological tension, consecrated life loses its reason for being and is reduced to an alternative form of life devoid of theological meaning.
Communion as the concrete form of Christian love
The monastery is not a place of spiritual individualism. The cenobitic tradition conceives it as a concrete school of communion, where Christian love does not remain an abstract principle but becomes a daily experience, visible and verifiable. This communion does not arise from affinities of character nor from a well-designed organisational project: it flows from the Eucharist and is translated into relationships marked by patience, forgiveness and fidelity, until it becomes a form of humanity shaped by the Gospel.
The risk today is to mistake all this for a simple group dynamic: to reduce fraternal life to sociology, to techniques of coexistence, to conflict management. When this happens, communion loses substance, is hollowed out from within, and the community is worn down by defensive logics, polarisation and weariness. The challenge is to return to the source: to recognise that unity has a Trinitarian and ecclesial root and therefore is not manufactured by human efforts alone, but is received as a gift and safeguarded through a daily obedience that also passes through the Rule, the liturgy and the conversion of the heart.
A spiritual path, not a technique
A third issue, particularly urgent today, concerns monasticism as a spiritual path. A charism is not first and foremost a set of practices or structures: it is a gift that becomes a journey, a concrete form of discipleship capable of leading to the knowledge of God and of transforming existence. The fragility of many communities cannot be explained solely by the decline in vocations; more profoundly, it is weighed down by the difficulty of transmitting a real, recognisable and habitable spiritual experience.
When formation relies almost exclusively on psychological tools or organisational models, at best one achieves a containment of discomfort, but one does not accompany the radical question of the soul nor educate for the interior struggle. The monastic tradition, by contrast, is born and grows from the intertwining of discernment, ascesis and personal accompaniment: a patient art that cannot be improvised and that requires credible guides, because the path is learnt by walking behind someone who knows it. Without authentic guides, the journey is interrupted, common life flattens out, and the charism risks being reduced to “form” without substance.
The primacy of God and the building of culture
The history of monasticism is closely bound to the history of Europe, because in more than one season of civil and moral disintegration it was precisely the monasteries that safeguarded what risked being lost: the sense of God, the sense of man, the sense of culture. The figure of Saint Benedict of Nursia remains emblematic: in a time of chaos, the monastic response took the form of a life brought back to what is essential, with a practical and decisive criterion, the primacy of God. From that primacy there flowed a new way of inhabiting time, of understanding work, of generating beauty, to the point of shaping the organisation of social life itself and the birth of a cultural fabric capable of re-composing what seemed fragmented.
From this perspective, ora et labora is to be read as a principle of interior order even before it is a formula: prayer structures the day, orients energies, purifies intentions and gives work its proper measure. When the service of God becomes the criterion of life, everything else finds its place without absolute claims, and in this very way the monastery becomes, over time, a source of spiritual and cultural regeneration.
Returning to the origin, today
The renewal of monastic life does not arise from nostalgic restorations or from superficial adjustments. It is played out, rather, in a return to the origin: to that living encounter with Christ that generated a charism, gave it a concrete form and continues to make it fruitful over time. When this source is lost, even the best practices risk becoming routine; when it is safeguarded, monastic life regains energy, clarity and the capacity to generate life.
In a fragmented and often disoriented world, the monastery thus remains a demanding and necessary sign: not because it offers immediate solutions, but because it bears witness in deeds that man rediscovers unity and freedom only by placing God back at the centre, allowing heart, time, relationships and hope to be reordered from that primacy.
fr. A.C.
Silere non possum